THE director of a national trust campaigning on mental health issues has called the inquiry into Bolton killer Nicola Faughey "pointless."

Michael Howlett, director of the Zito Trust, hit out at the published version of the report into the supervision and care given to 16-year-old psychiatric patient Faughey who stabbed neighbour Joanne Whitelegg to death.

Only a 25-page summary of the independent inquiry's full report was officially released this week because lawyers for Greater Manchester Strategic Health Authority advised them the longer version would lead to others involved in the case being identified.

But Mr Howlett said the summary report contains so little information about Faughey's background it is effectively useless.

He said: "For a health authority to behave in this way simply compounds the distress the victim's family have already been put through. It's totally unacceptable in our view. In our experience the health authorities which have set up inquiries, some of which have been extremely critical, have at least had the decency to publish the report in full.

"If you were to send this report to all health authorities and mental health trusts in the country in order to prevent a tragedy they wouldn't have enough information to go on.

"All the information on which you would understand how risk assessment had been carried out is missing. It's really quite a pointless report."

Sally Pickering, Joanne Whitelegg's sister, has also voiced her unhappiness that part of the report will remain confidential but said she did not blame its authors Martin Manby and Fiona Subotsky.

"I feel as if the main inquiry panel had their hands tied legally," she said. "The whole report should have been published." The Zito Trust, set up in memory of Jonathan Zito who was killed by a mental patient at Finsbury Park tube station, London, in 1992, have contacted the authority asking them to explain why the trust has not published the more detailed report.

But Ian Rhodes, the health authority's head of communications, said it would have been wrong to release the full report because it contained allegations against other individuals which were unsubstantiated and irrelevant to the Valentine's Day 2000 killing.

He said: "We obviously put it past the lawyers and it was their advice that we couldn't put the whole report in the public domain.

"Obviously this case is unusual because the inquiry found there weren't that many learning points compared to other cases because the agencies involved were commended.

"The summary does give those learning points and it does give the background of the incident and the events preceding it." Faughey was given a life sentence at Manchester Crown Court in 2001 for killing Miss Whitelegg. She was convicted for manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

The inquiry, standard practice in cases when a psychiatric patient has killed someone, was commissioned by Greater Manchester Strategic Health Authority.

LIFE SENTENCE: Nicola Faughey